Word: helgolanders
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...That thing" was Helgoland-the tiny, mile-long island, 28 miles north of Germany. In 1890, when Britain traded it to the Germans for Zanzibar and a chunk of continental Africa, it was considered a fine swap. "Like getting a whole suit of clothes for a single trouser button," crowed famed African Explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley. By 1914 the Kaiser had spent $80 million turning Helgoland into an "unsinkable battleship...
...Helgoland, Germany's rocky North Sea fortress, would be battered soon by "Tall Boy" and "Grand Slam," Britain's bigger & better (12,000 lbs. and 22,000 lbs.) R.A.F. bombs...
...chose submarine service because I was lazy. Submariners got more pay, and had more time in port. That appealed to me. I was navigating officer on H.M.S. Ursula [real name, use permitted by the British Admiralty], out five days on a patrol in the Helgoland Bight when war began...
...Boat Bases: Eight of eleven operational bases attacked. Brest (very light), Lorient (considerable), St. Nazaire (very heavy), La Pallice (severe), Trondheim (most severe), Helgoland (very light), Bordeaux (very light permanent damage), Gdynia (negligible material damage, considerable morale destruction by shattering sense of security). Concrete pens for U-boats, heavily bombed many times, were damaged only at Trondheim...
Britain, at Scapa Flow, and the U.S. and Britain, in Iceland, have naval bases on the fringes of the battle area. In Norway on the Atlantic, at Kiel and Helgoland on the North Sea approaches, the Nazis have a great advantage: an inner line of both naval and air bases to protect German supply routes and to launch attacks on the outer Allied routes. The Germans also have enough naval power at hand to give the Allies serious contest: the mighty Tirpitz, which apparently escaped unharmed from a recent torpedo-plane attack; the smaller Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, several cruisers...